Split at the Stem

Split at the Stem

"My friend, why have you drifted so far away? All motion is relative,

maybe it is you who have moved away by standing still."

-- Anonymous

Lily always remembered her sister as a flower. Their mother's flower maidens, they had always been, and she worked hard to remember that now.

She remembered tending the garden with their mother, and how Petunia had hovered on the edge, barely touching, disturbing nothing. Lily had looked from the neatly planted seedlings, their shy green heads peeking coyly from the dirt, to the row she herself had tended. A haphazard line of green plants had dodged this way and that along the dirt mound her mother had hoed into place for her. Already two had looked near to wilting, and a third she had managed to all but squash between her fingers. She'd glanced down at her hands, which were covered in dirt and grime and stray smears of green from the plants she'd handled too roughly. Petunia had been nearly pristine. Lily still didn't know how she'd managed that, when they were working elbow-deep in rich garden soil.

She remembered childhood games where Petunia had smiled - that strange half-smile that said she didn't believe, but she wished she could. They searched in corners and cupboards, searching for magic worlds and faeries and unicorns. Lily had always known they were there. What use was a world where the only magic to be found was bound up in books and pages? She talked to her sister late into the night of all the things she wanted - gryffons and unicorns and faeries that could make you fly. Petunia wanted fine gowns and handsome princes. Lily thought that was rather plain, but Petunia liked the idea, so she dreamed of that for her sister, too. Lily's princes weren't at all the pretty and reserved courtly types her sister wanted - hers were gallant and funny and brave. She had asked, once, whether Petunia believed. Her sister had smiled - too old for her age, too proper, even then - and shaken her head as she gently replied. "I believe that you believe." She'd told her. Diplomatic. The answer had satisfied Lily, then. It didn't anymore.

Looking back it was hard to tell where the line had broken, and sisters had become strangers. She remembered the letter, stilted green writing in an envelope that smelled of wet feathers. Petunia had read it gravely as their parents argued loudly over its contents. "Nonsense. Someone's idea of a prank with a trained bird!" her father had declared, his voice gruff with the cigarettes he smoked like a religion. Nasty things, Petunia always said. Lily liked the way they smelled. When her father was away she would bury her nose in the collars of his dirty shirts and breathe deeply, ignoring the lipstick smears he'd long since stopped cleaning off before Mother washed them.

Petunia had held the letter like it was foreign and strange, and Lily had begged her to say that she believed. "I believe that you believe." It had almost been enough, that time.

The school year brought the truth into the open, and Petunia had spoken less often. She smiled, still, when Lily asked her things. She helped her pack her trunk and pointed to the owl she'd liked best. (Plain brown and quiet with big, dull eyes. Lily had picked a snowy white owl with great over sized wings. It had thrummed with energy and hooted with every breath.) Lily had found her magical land, and their hunts for magic had ended. Lily knew that it existed - but then she always had. Petunia knew now, too. Lily wondered if knowing it was there only made her staid sister love it less.

The years passed and each summer the void between them was wider. Petunia wore knee length skirts and no makeup. She spoke scornfully of the loose America actresses whose scandals littered the trade pages, and never asked Lily how school was. When Lily volunteered information, Petunia would smile her thin half-smile and listen as if she wanted to hear. Lily had thought she was just too afraid to ask, maybe. They listened to rock music too loud and Petunia never danced, but her head moved rhythmically to the beats and Lily believed that her sister was the same as she had always been - and maybe she was.

Her third year at school she realized that her secrets were all whispered in the ear of a quiet blonde girl who'd become her best friend. Summer holiday she spoke to Petunia of movies they'd go see, the garden they'd helped replant, the strange new bands with black hair and gloomy lyrics that Lily loved and Petunia found strange and improper. It was an unspoken agreement that Lily never spoke of her life at school, of the magic she learned, of the world Petunia was never a part of. Her sister rarely listened to music anymore, and her smile had changed from wistful to tight and pinched, much of the time. She looked older than her years.

Fifth year Lily fell in hate, which was close to love, though she didn't know it at the time. He was arrogant and not even terribly good looking. His hair was messy and he wore glasses and he was entirely too cocky, and he hung about with that arse Sirius Black. Granted he hung about with Remus as well, so there must be something more to him than the surface, as Lily studied quite a bit with Remus and didn't think him the type to hang about with worthless types. She quite liked Remus, really. She told Petunia that she thought she fancied him. He was so quiet and thoughtful and a bit mysterious. If only he wasn't always with Potter and Black. A short, chubby lad named Peter followed Potter about like a dog after bones, and Lily felt a bit sorry for him, and a bit annoyed at the same time that he puffed up Potter's ego with his worship. Potter, the prat, obviously loved it.

Petunia listened because there was no one else. Lily could see in her eyes that she disliked hearing about them because they were wizards, and Petunia thought wizards entirely too odd. She wasn't sure when she'd realized Petunia thought that way, but she'd accepted it. It hurt sometimes, though. Petunia only put up with Lily's magic because she was her sister. She wondered if her sister would even have spoken to her, if they weren't blood-kin.

It was Petunia who pointed out, in her thin, prim voice which sounded nothing like the child she'd been, that Lily spoke of hating Potter more than liking Remus. Lily hadn't spoken to her for a week, and she'd owled Remus that her sister was impossible and claimed she fancied James. He'd responded with a box of chocolate frogs, and a short note that informed her that she'd written James' name a total of 19 times in her one page letter to him.

She'd not spoken to HIM till Hols were over.

Sixth year she sent home owls to her parents. She had letters to Petunia sent through regular mail, despite the hassle, as Petunia refused to answer Owl Post anymore. She went home for Christmas, because James was staying, and she was tired of being watched, and of having to pretend she wasn't watching back whenever he saw her. Petunia baked cookies with her, and the music on the stereo was quiet and bland. Her sister smiled her thin smile and tried to look interested in what Lily spoke of, but Lily could see the distance between them. She could see that what she was repelled her sister, who had somehow decided to wear ordinary as a badge of honor.

The end of sixth year was strange and quiet. James was often with Remus, or with Sirius, but never with both. Remus was silent and evasive and rarely sat to talk with Lily as he used to. She missed him, and could tell from the way Sirius and James watched him that they did too. James wore an odd expression of helplessness when he was with them, as if he were caught in the middle and didn't know how to escape. Somehow, she almost felt sorry for him. Sixth year ended and she went back to the house where she'd grown up, but it no longer felt like a home. Petunia and she kept different schedules and rarely saw one another. Lily didn't know if it was intentional or not, and if it was she didn't' know if it was her intention, her sister's, or both. Remus never returned her owls with anymore more than brief responses, and that Slytherin lad she'd been friendly with didn't return them at all. Peter's cheery, badly spelled responses were pleasant, but she always felt as if she had to search for things to say to Peter, whose whole world was filled with James and Sirius.

When James owled her, she owled back. When he came into London to see her, she went. And when she went back for seventh year, his face was the thing she most wanted to see. Petunia disapproved, she could tell, when she brought him back home for Christmas hols that year. He was too messy, too chaotic, too obvious with his magic. But her sister smiled, welcomed him to the house. When she overheard her speaking to James - their tones hushed and loving and fearful as they talked of marriage, children, madmen, and death - she only demanded to know if they were planning something illegal. Lily felt her heart plummet when her reassurances met only with a nod and her sister's slow, dignified departure. But Petunia had hugged her goodbye and confessed that she thought him good looking, and Lily had thought perhaps it wasn't so bad after all.

They married in the summer after they graduated. Sirius and Peter stood as Best Men and Remus gave her away. A month ago an accident that hadn't been accidental had claimed both of their parents. Lily had wept at the funeral that Petunia arranged while her sister stood stoic, her upset only visible to Lily, who had once known her well. She took no comfort in the well wishes, and when she stumbled upon Lily, Remus, James, and Peter in the corner, the men whispering reassurances to her weeping sister, she looked at Lily with the gaze of a stranger and asked if it had been an accident. James had answered, explained, and spoken of wars, hatred, death, murderers, and tyrants. She'd listened and looked at Lily, and then turned and walked away.

At the wedding Sirius and Peter stood as best men and Remus gave her away. Petunia and her beau, a beefy bland man named Vernon who scowled at the proceedings, stood and watched. They both wore conservative clothes of dull cut and drab color. Petunia wore a ring around her finger, but she said nothing to Lily of an engagement. She congratulated James and her on their marriage as if they were odd acquaintances she had to deal with for appearances sake - polite but impersonal. Vernon shook hands as if they were contaminated and nattered on about some boring muggle business as James' hand squeezed Lily's reassuringly and she wondered when she had stopped being the same kind of person her sister was.

A year later she got a notice of her nephew's - Dudley, they had named him - christening. It was an announcement, the ceremony past without an invitation to attend. Her belly was a small mound and her breasts were swollen by the life within her, and she wept quietly while James held her. In the next room Sirius and Remus argued, their voices cutting through the walls of their small home like they were made of paper. She buried her ears and tried to pretend that the life she lived was still the one she'd dreamed of as a child, when she had searched for magical worlds with her sister. She wanted the magic without the horror, the fear, and the strain of wondering which of those she had come to love would die next.

She called Petunia from a muggle phone when Harry was born, her voice still weak from childbirth. Petunia had apologized that she couldn't come, as Dudders was down with a fever, and congratulated her briskly on the baby. She said that Harry seemed a bit of a common name, but she was sure it would grow on her, and that she'd talk to Lily soon. Lily cried herself to sleep in the arms of her hospital roommate, Alice, who had given birth only hours before Lily herself had.

Remus and Sirius came round more often, taking James away to corners of the house where they thought she couldn't hear and whispering of treachery they saw in one another's eyes. Lily hugged her child and prayed for a magic door that would take her family into the world she knew had to be there, somewhere. A world where their house wasn't a prison and their friends weren't their enemies, and her sister smiled as she had when they were young. She and James argued over choices that no one should have to make, and made love afterward with the fervor of young lovers who realized that tomorrow may never come. She waited, always, for the death knell and the Dark Mark, and the time when she would have to fight and choose.

When it came, she still wasn't ready. She never could have been. Her world flashed before her with the glow of sick green light. Her son's eyes, her husband's hands, Remus's gray-streaked hair, and a half-smile she hadn't seen since she was a child, and she had a sister - those were the things she remembered in the end.